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Can drinking diet soda lead to depression?

By Annie Hauser, Everyday Health Staff Writer

Posted:
01/09/2013 04:42:50 PM MST

Just under half of all Americans reported drinking at least one glass of soda per day, while two-thirds said they drink at least one cup of coffee daily, according to a 2012 Gallup poll. Despite popular opinion about soda and weight gain, the same poll found that frequent soda drinkers do not weigh more than non-soda drinkers.

But health experts still say that even one glass of soda a day is too much, as it has been linked to a variety of health problems, including a relatively new one, clinical depression.

Preliminary data from a National Institutes of Health report that will be released in March at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego show that regular soda drinkers, particularly those who drink diet soda, are more likely to be diagnosed with depression. The data showed that coffee drinkers, on the other hand, have a slightly lower risk of a depression diagnosis.

The researchers do not say that soda causes depression — they did not determine whether people who are likely to become depressed are also simply more likely to drink soda in the first place, and the study did not control for all relevant factors, such as socioeconomic status. What they did find was that people who drank more than four cans or cups of soda per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression over the course of the 10-year study than people who drank no soda. Fruit punch drinkers were 38 percent more likely to develop depression than those who did not drink sweetened drinks. Depression risk appeared to be even greater for people who drank diet soda rather than regular soda, and diet rather than regular fruit punches and iced tea.

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Meanwhile, heavy coffee drinkers in the study experienced more than a caffeine buzz : They were also about 10 percent less likely to develop depression than those who drank no coffee.

This most recent finding doesn't necessarily mean you should quit Diet Coke cold turkey and run out for a cup of joe instead. But it's not the first time researchers have found a link between soda consumption and mood. One study of teens in Boston found that those who drank six or more cans of soda per week were more likely to be violent with family and friends and even carry weapons. Researchers associated heavy soda consumption with a 9 percent to 15 percent increase in the risk for aggressive behavior, and suggested that sugar or caffeine may be to blame.

Because past studies have linked poor emotional health to the sugar in soda , this most recent finding is a little more ambiguous. It either indicates that both sugar and the artificial sweeteners in diet drinks may be related to depression, or that other factors contribute to the link between soda drinking and clinical depression. Still, cutting down on both regular and diet soda can help your health in a number of ways.

"Our research suggests that cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk," said study author Honglei Chen, MD, PhD , in a release. "More research is needed to confirm these findings, and people with depression should continue to take depression medications prescribed by their doctors."

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